Progress

It's been two months since launch and we've hit relatively smooth sailing. New features are being added as bugs are struck down and major gameplay additions are popping up in every patch. Exciting additions are on the horizon: race creation, minimaps, and a bunch more we've yet to announce.

Star Ruler is our answer to the common 4X and RTS. Some of it's features include:

  • A fully customizable and new experience each time you play:
    • A fully dynamic, procedurally-generated galaxy, generated by the player, which may be altered over time (create stars, planets, and other interstellar phenomena; turn planets into roving space stations, stars into powerful defensive and offensive stations, asteroids into moving colonies, etc.);
    • Fully customizable ships (Choose the components, their sizes, and the AI that governs a ship's behavior) whose scale can range from the size of a boat to the size of the entire galaxy;
    • Research systems which provide different benefits for every playthrough, AI which adapts to the player's actions, and complex diplomatic interactions between other empires/players.
  • Extensive mod support (nearly 80% of the game is easily modable by an editor as simple as Notepad);
    • Built in tools for the ease of the modder such as a Particle System editor and a Scenario editor
    • Example mods and scripts ship with the game to provide scripters and modders an easy transition to the internals of Star Ruler
    • A fully implemented scripting language (AngelScript) allows users to create entirely new gamemodes, gameplay, and online experiences easily and rapidly.
  • Intense, massive (potentially thousands versus thousands of ships) ship battles fought in realtime using user-made ships with particle effects, physics-enhanced shockwaves, and location-based damage;
    • Newtonian physics
    • A robust, flexible, engine which can be scaled to match the hardware the player is using to provide a smooth framerate on their platform;
    • Ships whose individual systems can be compromised, destroyed, disabled, and repaired in combat
    • Systems which, when damaged, can cause catastrophic failure to internal components (a fuel tank's explosion setting off a volatile cache of munitions which damages the main power supply and control system of the ship, leading to life support failure and imminent crew death if the crew is not rescued in time or can't repair the damage done to the ship, for instance)
    • Subsystems such as Bulkheads and Coolant Systems which modify internal components, adding that extra 'oomph' or extra bit of armor to protect a potentially fatal flaw in the player's designs.
  • Support for co-operative play, team/objective based play, competitive play, and single play (skirmish and scenario alike)
    • Mutliplayer: up to 10 players simultaneously, with drop-in-drop-out compatibility), supporting both internet and LAN play
    • Server controls: servers can easily set whether to allow or disallow technologies, custom races, and support the kicking and banning of players
    • Seamless online/offline transitioning. Players can save their games in multiplayer and see how the game might have changed if they chose another route by playing simulating it through Singleplayer; saved games can be booted up at any time with other players joining in, allowing games to be generational.
  • An easy to use interface to a complex simulation:
    • Planetary governors which take care of planets intelligently using a simple, easy-to-use, language which may be modified on-the-fly by the player to quickly and efficiently manage their entire Empire without much of the micromanagement typically involved; allowing the player to set their assets up and step in to directly control them as necessary without getting in the way of the rest of their game.
    • Ships have their own fuel stores, power supplies, and et cetera.; all of this represented in a very visible, easy-to-read, format along with visual cues to keep the focus on the battles, not the numbers
    • Numerous easy-to-use interfaces to provide quick solutions to specific problems, all of them modifiable and scriptable by the end-user for maximum comfort.
  • Much more! And the game will be (and continues to be) rapidly enhanced post-release.
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RSS Related Articles

Release: Galactic Armory 1.9.2

Less is more


Sometimes, less is more. This became evident after we have been receiving lots and lots of reports from players that their game was either repeatedly crashing during gameplay, or not even load at all.

After weeks of searching for the cause for this severe issue and with the help of the SR Devs we had been able to narrow this down to being a memory issue. However, player reports clearly indicated that they did not, in fact, run out of system memory. The main cause for this was running out of video RAM.

So in order to significantly reduce the load on RAM and VRAM we decided to cut down on texture resolution where we could. Additionally, we removed the two recolor shipsets (terrakin green and neumon blue) from the main release. This was especially necessary with the addition of a new, completely original shipset. As a result, the average memory usage should be several hundred MB less without noticeable decrease in visual quality.

All of the content we removed from the main release - loading screens, shipsets, high-resolution textures - are available as separate, optional download in our Galactic Armory Optional Resource Pack (GA-ORP).

The arrival of a new fleet


One of the main features of this release is the addition of a new original shipset. The models were created by Polarstorm, creator of the Race Evolution mod for Star Ruler. Textures and UV-Mapping were done by XTRMNTR2K.


It is important to note that this shipset had originally been created with a texture resolution of 2048x2048 in mind (regular SR textures are 1024x1024). However, the aforementioned memory issues forced us to use 1024x1024 in our main release instead; sadly these don't look as good and crisp as the original textures. If you have a particularly powerful system and lots of VRAM, you can download the Optional Resource Pack and install the high-resolution textures manually. Be warned, however, that these can and will increase memory usage by a huge amount.

tl;dr you can enjoy the high-resolution goodness if you want, but don't come whining about frequent game crashes because you are running out of VRAM.

Galactic Armory Optional Resource Pack
Download @Mod DB
Download @mediafire

More bling for your buck


Well, technically you shouldn't be paying any money to get this mod, but we'll get you more bling anyways! We are proud to present a complete redesign of almost all custom (and some vanilla) subsystem art featured in the mod. Here's a preview:


These were created by our talented and hardworking team member cause792, with approximately 1% additional work done by XTRMNTR2K.

Aside from these obvious changes we also enhanced various other graphical aspects of the mod, such as the engine flares. Each shipset in Galactic Armory now features custom animated engine flares, based on graphics provided by Tyrador:


Gameplay changes


Aside from bugfixes, new content, graphical enhancements and minor balance adjustments Galactic Armory 1.9.2 also includes a (hopefully) major change to gameplay. It occured to us that Remnant Jump Bridges weren't really often used by players, mostly because of the fact that they only spawned in otherwise empty systems. This meant their impact on gameplay was negligible.

Not anymore! In order to spice things up somewhat, the spawning method used to place Jump Bridges in the galaxy at game start was altered. Jump Bridges no longer spawn in their own systems, but instead have a chance of appearing in every type of system in the galaxy. This should encourage their use and spawn some interesting tactics...

For more information on Jump Bridges, check out the updated ingame Stellarpedia!

Thank You!


This mod wouldn't have come this far without the help, support and, of course, hard work of a lot of people. Since it would be inevitable that I'd forget to mention at least a few people, I'll keep it general (because YOU know who YOU are!):

A 'thank you!' goes to

  • the Galactic Armory Core Team for their hard work and generally just being awesome people
  • everyone who has contributed something to the mod in the past
  • our loyal fans who continue to inspire with their support, knowledge and ideas
  • and last but most certainly not least the developers of Star Ruler, Blind Mind Studios - for a great game, their continuous support and for being the coolest game developers around these days.

Final Words, or: The Future of Galactic Armory


After releasing 1.9 and 1.9.1b, we originally intended to focus our efforts towards the development of Galactic Armory 2.0 (gasp!). The need to create yet another release inbetween came up due to the aforementioned memory issues, game content that hadn't been finished by the time 1.9.1b was released as well as some bugs that needed to be fixed.

What does this mean? Well, as long as there are no urgent bugs that we need to adress with a hotfix, this will be the last release of the mod... for a long time.

No, we aren't stopping development of Galactic Armory. Quite on the contrary! Compared to what we have done and achieved so far, our goals for GA 2.0 are quite a bit more ambitious. And ambitious projects need development time. Remember folks, we are doing this in our spare time, without getting paid... Not that we mind. But our main resource isn't money, it's time; and we intent to make the best use of it. So stay tuned for more Galactic Armory news in the coming months!


Changelog:

  • [Added] New Effector Graphics
  • [Added] Boarding Defense default blueprint for human player
  • [Added] New Page to Stella pedia explaining jump bridge mechanics and usage.
  • [Added] Polarstorm shipset
  • [Added] New and improved planet and lightmap textures
  • [Added] Separate animated engine flares per shipset (base graphics provided by Tyrador)
  • [Added] Additional new subsystem art
  • [Added] Achievement Systems and Spectator Multiplayer Added from 1.2.1.0
  • [Added] Remnant Bridge Charge 20m Roughly
  • [Added] Bridge Recharge 10 mins to 0 - Max
  • [Added] Overlay to Display Bridge Charge
  • [Added] Function to stop bridges from moving when bumped
  • [Added] Game Setting to Control Bridge Density
  • [Added] Change for multiple bridges per system
  • [Added] Loading Screen Update Progress for Bridge Creation
  • [Added] Mouse Over to Remnant Jump Bridges to show Link State
  • [Balance] Changed all types of resource storage subsystems to use the same type of formula to determine storage size
  • [Balance] Reduced Hauler and Tanker hull storage values by 50%
  • [Changed] Balance Start will ensure no Jump Bridges in starting system
  • [Changed] Remnant Jump Bridges Now Spawn In System
  • [Changed] Remnant Jump Bridges Can Link to Any Jump Bridge (Still need to be owned to link)
  • [Changed] Remnant Jump Bridges Owned By Space On Spawn
  • [Changed] Space Damage will not hurt Jump Bridges
  • [Changed] Bridge Spawn Method for random system, no distance tracking.
  • [Changed] Bridge Tool use will not be offered if a ship that is too big is selected
  • [Changed] Bridge Activation to Cost Charge with mass as the value
  • [Changed] Reduced resolution of many texture files to decrease memory usage. Obsolete high-resolution planet textures have been moved to the Galactic Armory Optional Resources Pack (GA-ORP).
  • [Changed] Replaced various subsystem graphics
  • [Changed] Replaced various effect graphics
  • [Changed] Significantly reduced resolution of various ship mark and glowmap textures to further reduce RAM usage
  • [Changed] Renamed Mass Driver (Light) to Mass Driver
  • [Changed] Renamed Mass Driver to Large Mass Driver and changed category from Ballistic to Special Weapon
  • [Changed] Updated Context menu to 1.2.1.0 features
  • [Fixed] Solar Power
  • [Fixed] AI Personality Name + Description
  • [Fixed] Point Defence Null Pointer
  • [Fixed] Planet Structure Space
  • [Fixed] Jump Drive Fuel Check
  • [Fixed] AI personality description
  • [Fixed] Heliocide Hull tech requirement (Spatial Dynamics) was one level higher than indicated
  • [Removed] neumon_blue and terrakin_green shipsets to reduce memory usage. These have been added to the Galactic Armory Optional Resources Pack (GA-ORP).
  • [Removed] Loading screens to further reduce memory usage. These have been added to the GA-ORP.

Download locations:
Download at ModDB: Download
Download Galactic Armory 1.9.2 for SR 1.2.1.0 at mediafire: Download
Desura Digital Distribution
Galactic Armory 1.9 released!

Galactic Armory 1.9 released!

Galactic Armory 3 comments

It has arrived! After eight months, filled with despair and hope (but mostly hard work, really) we are proud to present Galactic Armory 1.9 to the public...

Galactic Armory 1.8.1 for SR 1.1.0.0 released!

Galactic Armory 1.8.1 for SR 1.1.0.0 released!

Galactic Armory 2 comments

Galactic Armory 1.8.1 has been released! This release contains important bugfixes and ensures full compatibility with the latest version of Star Ruler...

Galactic Armory 1.8 released!

Galactic Armory 1.8 released!

Galactic Armory

Version 1.8 of Galactic Armory for Star Ruler 1.0.9.0 is finally available! Check out the news post for more information on all new features.

Star Ruler mods supported

Star Ruler mods supported

News 3 comments

Desura now supports two modifications for the indie game Star Ruler.

RSS Related Files
Galactic Armory 1.9.4 for SR 1212

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A new version of Galactic Armory has been released! 1.9.4 fixes the issues with governors, remnants and other areas from 1.9.3 and adds the ability for...

Galactic Armory Patch 1.9.2 to 1.9.3 for SR 1212

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This small patch contains fixes for two issues that were still remaining in the latest full release (1.9.2) of the mod. Changelog: [Fixed] checkTrade...

Patch 1.2.1.0 to 1.2.1.2

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Patch

The 1.2.1.2 incremental patch for Star Ruler.

Galactic Armory 1.9.2 for Star Ruler 1.2.1.0

Galactic Armory 1.9.2 for Star Ruler 1.2.1.0

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Galactic Armory 1.9.2 is now available! This release adds a completely new and original shipset, new original subsystem art, changes jump bridges from...

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Galactic Armory Other

====================== Galactic Armory Optional Resources Pack (GA-ORP) ====================== This pack contains resources that have been removed from...

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Patch 1.2.0.0 to 1.2.1.0

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The 1.2.1.0 incremental patch for Star Ruler.

Post comment Comments  (0 - 10 of 227)
Sid0035
Sid0035

Still best game ever, if i get the money some day i will restart the golbal hosting server some day, best game ever been playing since 2015 will never stop... :)

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Fluffeh
Fluffeh

It is a wonderful game, shame the company was treated badly before.

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Chalk
Chalk

It's... A good game, I suppose... Not the best... There are a lot of issues and problems. It feels too roughly thrown together. For instance, you literally have no idea when another empire declares war on you unless you check the Diplomacy screen every 5 seconds. And your research goes way too slow, even on Normal difficulty the enemy empires seem to advance with a handicap mode on. I'd give it 6.5/10

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Guest
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yone
yone

Looks good but in some images it looks like there is a lot info showned trought text, and icons are always easily seen, so less text more icons.

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Pulec
Pulec

The tutorial is sooo long, but good. Maybe it would be better to divide it a bit, I was overwhelmed.

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shazzi2k
shazzi2k

StarDrive seems alot better than this.

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TigerClawTV
TigerClawTV

I dont think this video really does the game justice. It's a good game.

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bloodaxe95
bloodaxe95

Will the race-customization be even more in-depth? like, the ability to add your very own race image and icon? :) Just wondering, since i LOVE customization :D and btw, even though i suck at it, this game is AWESOME!

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Piemanlives
Piemanlives

you can add them in via mods, check around the forums for details, cause that's all i have.

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